The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly pervasive, with a recent report from IDC estimating that there will be over 82 billion connected devices by 2025.
Unfortunately, despite the growing ubiquity of IoT projects, a recent study from Cisco showed that nearly 75% of projects fail, with even those that were actually delivered seldom regarded as a success.
The report pinned the blame on such failures on a number of things, but central was the excessive focus on technology over the various human factors that influence IoT success. For instance, the most common reason cited for failure was a lack of effective collaboration between IT and the rest of the business, whilst a lack of IoT expertise in the business was also a key factor.
A broad ecosystem
Central to success IoT implementation is the ability to leverage an ecosystem of partners who can help provide this broad level of expertise and ensure you not only have the technological integration but also the cultural and softer factors that are so important.
“We are seeing new IoT innovations almost every day,” Cisco say. “We are connecting things that we never thought would be connected, creating incredible new value to industries. But where we see most of the opportunity, is where we partner with other vendors and create solutions that are not only connected but also share data. That shared data is the basis of a network of industries – sharing of insights to make tremendous gains for business and society, because no one company can solve this alone.”
One of these partners is the Dutch lighting giant Philips Lighting who are increasingly connecting their products together to provide customers with a richer experience, whether in the hospital or office.
Smarter cities
Arguably their most active area however is in smart cities, where they are working with municipalities to make their street lighting more efficient, effective and eco friendly.
A good example of this is the work the company has done in Los Angeles. The city have converted all of their street lights to connected LED lighting, and early results indicate an energy saving of around 63% per year, which is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to around 10,000 passenger vehicles.
There's a strong sense that there is ample scope to build upon these impressive early results. For instance, among the Philips ecosystem are companies able to expand the capabilities of streetlights to monitor everything from air pollution levels to traffic flow.
“The crucial point here is that the technology to markedly improve the world’s energy productivity already exists – the key now is to ensure its wider adoption. Individuals, businesses, governments and other organizations must work together to achieve this," Eric Rondolat, CEO at Philips Lighting told me recently.
"Improving energy productivity allows you to cut energy consumption, meaning lower carbon emissions and energy bills. This frees up money that can be invested elsewhere to stimulate economic growth. Governments thus have more funds to spend on essential public services and infrastructure.”
It's an approach that Cisco believe is crucial to achieving success with IoT, with the most effective users of the technology engaging with their partner ecosystem at every stage. It's something that is only possible if you have exceptionally strong partnerships.
A recent study found that the best partnership networks see individual members performing a narrow and tightly focused range of tasks, with all parties contributing equally to the project. When they shared an average amount of resources with the hub organization however, the returns were usually excellent.
“In essence, we argue that there are positive returns from multi-partnering efforts when partnering scale increases from [low to medium] levels,” the authors say.
It's quite clear that we have barely begun to scratch the surface of the benefits possible where the Internet of Things are concerned, and it's clear that a robust partnership network will be crucial to ensure that promise is realized.
